No one in his right mind can ever condone the carnage, both the initial one
at Godhra railway station and its response in the rest of Gujarat. By all means
it is reprehensible. Though it is neither the first nor the worst, but even one
life lost in communal violence is one too many.

The question we need to address is "Why is Hindu so angry?" The same Hindu
whose tolerance is so legendary. Why was the response to Godhra incidence so
brutal?

However we might deny, burning of sixty Hindus trapped inside a railway
bogey, horrendous as it is, is not the sole cause that led Gujarat to this
carnage. And Hindu anger is not limited to Gujarat alone. It has echo of support
from Amritsar to Chennai and from Mumbai to Kolkata. The Godhra incident, at
best, lit the fuse to the time bomb that has been ticking for a long time.

Unless we are willing to delve deeply into the real cause such acts of
violence will keep on repeating, probably even more frequently. If one goes for
treatment to a doctor, he looks not only at current affliction and inquires not
only the history of the patient but also his family. Why?

The powers that be will like us to believe that India was born on 15th August
1947 and before that it was just some empty landscape. Out from somewhere a
Mahatma appeared and lo! A nation was born. Unfortunately, that is not so. There
was India long before that. If we want to know what ails India, what causes such
outbursts of Hindu anger, we have dig deeper into its past like a doctor goes
into family history.

The fact is that starting from 712 CE when Muhammad bin Kasim invaded Sindh
and let the reign of terror loose, India has been repeatedly terrorized, raped
and plundered. Hindus captured, taken out of the country, sold like vegetables
in foreign markets, massacred by the millions, forced to convert, made to live
as slaves, and denied even their basic right to practice their own religion in
their own country. The contemptible jiziya imposed time and again. Hindu women
raped, ravished, abducted and massacred; again by the millions. Hindu temples,
by the tens of thousands, demolished, desecrated, and plundered. Idols ripped of
their silver, gold and jewels, broken into pieces, and shipped to far off places
to be kept in front of mosques so that the faithful can tread upon them. Mosques
built upon demolished temples or from materials obtained from them. (This was
not for creating composite culture.) These atrocities on Hindus went on for
centuries and the vandals, with great glee, recorded all these as something to
be proud of.

Scholars like Alberuni went on to write:

"Mahmud utterly ruined the prosperity of the country, and performed such
wonderful exploits, by the which Hindus became like atoms of dust scattered in
all directions, like a tale of old in the mouth of the people."

This is a very mild description of what went on for centuries. Other
descriptions are blood curdling. They are so well known, this is not the place
to repeat them here.

It is also no secret that Hindu civilization had caused no harm to have been
subjected to such horrendous acts of vandalism. This was completely unprovoked.

The current wisdom is that if we turn a blind eye to all that happened in the
past, every thing will be hunky dory. Is that so? If it were the nature of
civilizations to forget the past, neither would the Hindus be celebrating
Vijayadashmi every year nor the Shias beating their breast every Muaharram. The
truth is that a civilization as long as it is alive does not forget either the
good or the bad. Civilizations have long memory.

The present situation, to a large extent, has been brought upon us by our own
people, especially those who go under the banner of "secularists". They have
whitewashed the vandalism of their own nation. Not only have they removed all
traces of Hindu suffering from the nation's history books, they have gone on to
justify them. They have made the victims of the most horrendous crimes against
humanity look as the perpetrators. They have denied Hindus their "Muharram".
They have denied the Hindus their heritage. Secularists' pronouncements on the
Godhra tragedy "the Hindus had it coming" or "they invited it upon themselves"
is typical of their cynicism, and complete lack of any objectivity and
sensitivity. When Babri masjid was demolished did they proclaim, the Muslims had
demolished so many Hindu temples, they had it coming?

I don't know what their agenda is but they cannot be ignorant of the facts of
history because they have access to all the books written by the real
perpetrators of these crimes.

What can be done to assuage the agony of the Hindus?

Firstly, the history books should reflect the facts of history as they took
place. History should not be converted into fiction to please some whims or new
found political correctness.

Secondly, we should accept that the Muslims of today are not responsible for
acts of vandalism of the past. Having said that, the Muslims should also
dissociate themselves from the plunderers and vandals of India. And as they are
not responsible for or should not have any association with the past acts of
vandalism, they also cannot be owners of the property built from such vandalism.
If they claim such property that would mean they justify and condone the carnage
done to the Hindus. Then there can be no solution to the problem. Some rights
have no time limits especially where civilizational ethos are involved.

Thirdly, we should do what will go a long way to heal the agony of the
Hindus. We should go through the records maintained by those vandals, and return
all the buildings -- not just three -- that were built on or from material
obtained by demolishing Hindu temples or other monuments. As stated previously
the Muslims of today have no right on them. The mosques under this category also
should fall in the same class as other monuments like Red Fort or Qutub Minar or
Fatehpur Sikri -- to cite just a few. The Muslims don't own these monuments. The
same should be true of other buildings. The Muslims should hand over all such
buildings to the government of India. They all need not be demolished and should
not be demolished (except for two more for which the Hindus have deep religious
sentiments) -- they are part of our history. They are living embodiment of the
story of Hindu agony. All these should be converted into a countrywide museum of
Hindu holocaust.

What we need is serious introspection of Hindu agony. Our "secularists" have
asked us to take proverbial Ostrich like approach and bury our heads in sand.
This is not going to work.

Hindu agony needs to be addressed. The dark period of India's history needs
to addressed with grave concern and in its proper perspective.